DIGITAL digest

"Traditionally, the only way to capture more business when demand is shrinking has been to emphasize lower prices," he continues. "These customer engagement models provide another way."

Mills Davis, managing director of Project 10X, believes value chain integration is key to the concept of a digital smart factory. "A focus on process integration promises huge benefits to the industry—up to 10 times improvement in performance in some cases," Davis says. While noting that significant barriers remain, he claims the "shared resource architecture promises a new process platform with dramatically better lifecycle economics that benefit all value chain participants."